In today's vast world of telecommunications, there is an ever-evolving network topology of different types of cellular devices that handle different densities of customers. For example, macrocell, microcell and picocell sites can be included in the same network and can service different densities of customers. Macrocell devices can have antennas greater than approximately 80 feet above ground level and whose transmitted radio frequency (RF) power is above 100 watts Equivalent Isotropically Radiated Power (EIRP). Microcell devices can have antennas approximately 80 to approximately 25 feet above ground level and whose transmitted RF power is between 100 watts and 5 watts EIRP. Picocell devices can have antennas below approximately 25 feet above ground level and whose transmitted RF power is below 5 watts EIRP. It is important to understand these three general types of sites (and correspondingly sites)—and the interaction among them to understand the future of radio networks and, thus, the embodiments described herein are important for providing such understanding and solutions to address issues resultant from these complex networks.
The network topology and/or landscape of a system can be a primary driver demanding that a network problem detection become faster and/or more automated. There are expectations that networks of tomorrow will densify and tomorrow's network demand of more calls, data and video can only be satisfied by a more densely packed network of cell sites than what is experienced in today's networks. Thus, growing network complexity and network demand can call for improved approaches to detection and/or remediation of problems.
Further, providers can have more than 100,000 cell site nodes to manage, often in uncontrolled environments more prone to failures and/or difficult to access. As radio networks densify, the number and variety of cell site nodes and uncontrolled conditions will likely increase by an order of magnitude. The increasing probability and volume of cell site node failures drives the resources for more resources to manage detection, diagnosis and correction. As systems become more complex, this makes it more difficult to match each problem with the associated cell site condition. Further, it is difficult to determine whether there has been a solution that was successful previously. Further, efforts to track, trend and timely respond to emerging conditions are labor intensive and not always perfectly accurate. Documentation and trouble handling processes therefore become inefficient, ineffective and unresponsive. This is true for the cellular communications business, medical industries and any other field where system and trouble complexity and volume exceed human capabilities to deal with them. Lastly, many other discreet variables such as specific location, specific mobile device, specific user application, specific time of day and a plethora of other operational details are not routinely captured and stored to make better optimization or diagnostic decisions.